Book Reviews from Around the World

By Doug Fields (Saddleback's youth pastor)

I can honestly say that I have learned a lot from this book. Fields writes from the experience of 23 years in youth ministry and his many stories and illustrations gave me a better picture of what this next season of our life is going to be like as youth pastors. He must have a memory like a steel trap because it seems like he thought of every detail that you could possibly want to know about youth ministry from dealing with student leaders to recruiting a solid team of volunteers.
The chapter that I took the most away from was on how to deal with parents of the students. His insight as a parent and pastor was invaluable, especially for someone who knows practically nothing about teenagers, other than I was one at one point in life. This chapter on working with parents of students alone was worth reading the entire book for. It was a fresh look at youth ministry from the approaches that I have exprienced so far in life.
I didn't agree with everything in this book but it did cause me to think about lots of areas that I hadn't even considered about youth ministry. My discrepancies with the book were minor and not enough to discredit the wealth of insight and stimulated thoughts that I took away from it. I would highly recommend this book to anyone involved in youth ministry or headed in that direction.
Fields propagated his book as the Handbook to youth ministry and while I probably won't keep it on my bookshelf and reread it every year, it was definitely worth reading through at least once. For me, the book sparked thoughts and ideas about how we will operate uniquely inside of youth ministry rather than being a how to manual for youth pastors everywhere.